Fallowfell – Chapter 62

If you haven’t had the opportunity, then let me be the first one to tell you; punching a sandbag feels good. It’s almost like hitting a real person, except, you know, the whole charges thing, angry judge, broken knuckles, people looking twice at you as you walk down the hall.

I give the bag a left straight, followed by a right straight. For reasons which I am not entirely sure of, boxers fight using their non-dominant arm slightly in front of them. So if your right arm is your dominant arm, your left arm will be in front of it. If your left arm is your dominant arm, then your right arm will be in front of it. The latter is known as a ‘southpaw’, and no, it is not a cute animal with ridiculosly big paws- and I did ask, to Hermann’s eternal amusement.

Right uppercut and the motion of my arm veers off again. Throwing straights are relatively easy. You punch straight. But with uppercuts there is a tendency to go to big. And that’s where someone will capitalize on your mistakes. /You need to make the motion more compact./

And good morning to you too, Verde. I feel him stretching, not entirely unlike a cat. Verde, I have a question.

/Ask and ye shall receive./ I punch the bag again, this time with my left arm. I have been thinking. Werewolves or the beast-souled as you called them, they’re the closest supernatural to berserkers. Do they talk to their wolves like we do?

/No, not even close. Werewolves…. the souls of immortal wolves have been chained to that of mortal men and women. We have cojointment. Union. Partnership. We agreed that we would be equal partners. In the relationship between a man and his wolf there is a rule of dominance. One must be king. And also…/

I punch the bag. One, that is my left straight, two, that is my right straight. One-two. One-two. One-two. /The mechanics of making a werewolf differ from that of a berserker. A werewolf is savaged, either voluntarily or not, by another werewolf. This will cause an infection, magical in nature, on several levels. Their flesh will grow stronger. Their minds quicker. But on the level of souls, the infection will intertwine a nascent wolf soul to that of the human soul until they are one./

I punch the bag some more. I don’t understand how that is different from what we got. /Oh but it is. The gleipnir ensures that there will always be a certain amount of separation between our souls, which in one sense diminishes our power, but grants more autonomy./

I halt my punching. Wait, you’re saying that the werewolves, they don’t have a Sunny Isle? /I am not familiar with that particular term./ You know, the place with sandy dunes, where you roll around and sleep sometimes. /No, they do not. The wolf is always present to some degree.

Shit. That has to be… Do werewolves kill themselves often? /Yes. I decide that silence is the better part of valour, and I wonder how Amanda does it. No offense to Verde, but if I had to hear him talking all the time I would probably go insane.

***

Mozart’s Dies Irae starts to play on my phone. “Sup, Elenie”.

“Have you heard?”, she asks all gossipy. Is gossipy a word? “No, I haven’t heard what it is that you’re going to tell me. So please; do illuminate me” I say, playing the role of the interested party, although I am not.

“Helena Gravsten’s house burned down this night!” I make a noise somewhere between a grunt and yelp. Elena seems to take it as a sign that she should go on. “I mean, right. The police is investigating, but nobody knows who did it.” Greyscale was here. Or there. “The grapevine is that they’ve hauled out three bodies.” “Mmmm”, I say. ” Some people are saying that Helena Gravsten did it, and then ran away.” I gasp appropiately.

“And what’s more, Cordelia Holm has ran away from home.” “Really?”, I ask, trying for that 1950’s-housewife-amazement tone. “Some are even saying that she and Helena conspired together, and have now ran away.” That’s the truth, albeit, not the whole truth. “But you don’t believe that, do you?”, I can’t help but ask.

“Oh no, definitely not. But those bodies… they were Gravsten’s family. So somebody killed them, and then burned the house down. I think…” I tune her out. Greyscale might have burned the house down, and Hermann might have killed them, but that was mercy. His description of Helena’s mother…. I think I understand why the vikings burned their dead. When I die, I want to be cremated. Spread the ash in four directions in a meadow.

Our conversation end on Elena reminding me that the Bonfire Ball isn’t that far away, and that I should cross my dots. I am going to need a suit of some kind. And shoes. And a tie. And probably flowers. Hmm and I might need to cordinate a color-scheme with Nevena. But doesn’t men ordinarly wear suits a la black and white? Damn, I have to research this.

I make a note of buying an almanac to add all the notes that I have noted. What do I do now? It’s Tuesday, and thanks to our impromptu nightime discussion and some of Greyscale’s needling, I managed to get Hermann to sign off on a sick-waiver. My latest time experience with truancy has taught me that much atleast. Hmm, about the reasons for that truancy….
I compose and send a message to certain yellow-eyed girl.Some seconds later I get an answer, a positive one. I grin to myself.

***

If you have ever lived in a small town, you know that there is nothing to do. Now, occassionally, someone will think along these lines, and try to change it, and that’s when you get things like the Dome. A, name not withstanding, square warehouse where you can play lasertag for the small prize of two-thousand kronor an hour. The actual weapons smell like sweat, and the Dome itself is older than my generation, but it sure beats walking around at home, listless.

I meet up with Nevena before the entrance; a large metal door where someone has spraypainted a junoesque woman wearing strategically placed bits meant to hide her nakedness, but which tends to do the opposite. I make sure that I am looking at Nevena, and not the spraypainted woman.

I extend an arm. “Shall we?” She takes it. Yellow eyes are smouldering with a challenge. “Prepare to get your ass kicked, Fallowfell.”

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Good morning. Or perhaps it is good evening, depending upon your location perpendicular to Greenwhich.
My name is Sebastian. I like to write, run, and occassionally grab a beer. Not at the same time though.